Soul Crushing 101

I wrote this in response to a friend in a private community of my close college friends who tried to explain that the women in question aren’t “true feminists” and that they’re frauds who in some way deserve everything that is happening now. I don’t expect it to change his mind, but hopefully it will make the rest of our social circle think more. It’s certainly made me think more about being in that social circle anymore.

I am so depressed about this shit.

In the first post, the thing to really notice, besides the content, is that none of these posts is from further back then Aug 22nd, and most are the 29th - 2nd. A 5 day span.

The distance between woman software developer and woman gaming software developer is very small. These are people who could easily be my co-workers, my friends. This could be me. It’s bloody horrifying.

So, you know, sure, yell about journalistic integrity, fine. But even if (and it’s a big if) there’s some merit to corruption claims, this is before, after, and beyond that. And this is me, removing my employer and career from my twitter bio, just in case. And here’s me being afraid to follow people online, or say anything, for fear that it’ll be me next. And here’s me, just watching in horror, knowing that almost EVERYTHING I do with my waking hours is a male-dominated activity, from work, to sports, to games, and that at any moment someone may turn to me, realize I “don’t belong” and that’ll be it. If I’m “lucky” it’ll be online and “all” I’ll get is someone telling me about what kind of power tool he’ll rape me with. If I’m lucky.

But of course, these women are OBVIOUSLY doing it to themselves. Because who WOULDN’T love this kind of attention. wheeeeee.

So. Fucking. Depressed.

The worst part is? This is the whole point, to make me feel like this. To make me worry about talking about how unhappy and scared it all makes me. To make me too scared to post about how unacceptable any of this is on some rinky-dink back-water blog with 3 followers and like 7 hits on a good day. So, good job. Mission accomplished.